


Footprints

by RiceVermicelli



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Fluff, Fluff and Humor, Gen, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-05
Updated: 2020-08-05
Packaged: 2021-03-05 22:01:07
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,438
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25722496
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RiceVermicelli/pseuds/RiceVermicelli
Summary: James Copley tries to do good work.
Comments: 5
Kudos: 98





	Footprints

**Author's Note:**

> This piece is partly inspired by a Twitter thread about what your primitive ancestors would think of you (mostly, they'd be impressed that you get to eat meat so often), and by thinking about what all these people would be like if you just turned them loose on vacation with nothing to worry about, and they were letting off steam after way too long spent being serious all the time.

Last time Copley stopped in to the house outside Cannes, Nicky and Booker were wrapping fairy lights around the balcony railings, and Andy and Quynh were at risk of snorting margaritas out their noses while Nile (also laughing) tried to explain the importance of putting the lid on the blender.

He doesn’t get to even knock on the door this time. Joe rushes out past him, carrying a smoking microwave, which he drops in the driveway.

“Copley!” He yells, before enveloping the man in a bear hug. “Salam Aleikum! Did we know you were coming?”

“I thought you did.”

“Nile has a calendar on a whiteboard now, but things got a little out of hand while we were doing dishes last night - did you know the kitchen faucet has a sprayer?”

“Oh?” Copley’s voice cracks a little.

“We were winning the water fight until Booker and Quynh launched an offensive with the garden hose, and Andy defected.” He leads Copley back towards the house.

“Is that why it didn’t make sense to take that out the back?”

“Don’t worry! I remembered to wear oven mitts this time.” He waves one hand, which is indeed covered by an oven mitt, in cheerful orange.

“Don’t the neighbors complain about this kind of thing?”

“The neighbors love us!” Joe carols, stopping to wave. “Bonjour Madame Finch!”

Copley has a sinking feeling that he should have been more specific about what “lying low” entailed. The team seems to have absorbed “not like hiding out in a safe house” and nothing else. Absolutely nothing. Someone has added a light-up palm tree to one side of the balcony, opposite a light-up martini glass. Copley feels like someone’s dad visiting their frat house.

Inside, about half of the couch cushions have migrated to the floor. A video game is paused on the television, and there is a pyramid of empty beer cans on the coffee table. Joe leads Copley out to the pool deck in time to see Booker cannonball into the deep end with a shrieking Nile in his arms. 

“I was hoping we could talk!” Copley yells over the music. (Oh yes, there’s music. Very loud, very thumping music.) 

Andy gets up off a lounge chair. “What?” She yells. 

“IS THERE SOMEPLACE WE CAN TALK?” he yells, just after Nicky cuts the speakers.

They wind up in the dining room. Copley gets the head of the table, a respectful gesture by which centuries-old immortals manage to make him feel ancient. He is also the only person present wearing long pants. Booker threw a shirt on, but Quynh is fidgeting with her bikini top, and Joe and Nicky appear to be negotiating a bet about it. Nile looks attentive until Andy, seated across from her, runs a toe up the inside of the other woman’s calf, at which point half the table dissolves in giggles. Copley reminds himself that he’s a professional, and immediately has to squash the thought that his only current claim to the title is that he’s being paid to be here. 

“When you hired me,” he begins.

“Wait,” Book interrupts. “We hired him?”

Quynh pats his hand. “You were exiled at the time, honey. I wasn’t at that meeting either.”

Book reaches across the table to poke Andy. “Why did we hire him?”

“Because I didn’t want to spend my entire mortality learning to run accounting software. We were lost without you.” Andy shifts her caressing foot over from Nile. “We’re really sorry.”

“That’s great, actually. Having a mortal on our financials could really improve our plausibility with financial institutions.” His smile appears generically aimed at Andy’s foot, the hand he has on Quynh’s thigh, and the prospect of a few decades without bank meetings.

Copley clears his throat. “When you hired me, you expressed concern about your digital footprint.”

“Did we?” Asks Nicky. “I remember about footprints, but not so much ‘digital’.”

Andy is on the wrong side of the table to play footsie with Nicky, so she tickles the back of his neck instead. “It was the ether part.” 

“I thought ether was, like, the sky, the atmosphere.”

“I thought it was an anesthetic,” says Booker. 

Copley steps in to head off a word game. “It’s also the internet. And your internet footprint is a disaster.”

Joe snorts. “It can’t be that bad. We barely talk to anybody! Remember the time Nicky tried to match that American writer drink for drink?” He turns towards Copley, eager to explain. “Turns out, the guy had a liver like iron. Nicky got so drunk he started telling war stories, and this guy, turns out not to be so drunk he can’t take notes. Anyway, two or three years later, we run into him again - this is why we can’t repeat bars, just like no repeat clients - we run into him again in Paris!” 

“Is this going where I think it is?”

“Yes!” Crows Andy. “The son of a bitch turned out to be a reporter from the States! He wrote like a dozen short stories that were practically word for word what Nicky said while he was drunk.”

Booker shakes his head. “We all had to try to remember to call him ‘Steven’ for almost fifteen years, until it blew over. Everyone figured the writer guy just made shit up.”

“Don’t be so smug!” Nicky shoots back. “You helped clear a traffic jam in front of a novelist once, and now there’s a musical.”

“Right.” Copley coughs and tries to remember where he was. “It is possible your internet use is going to be more of a problem.”

“We’re not telling war stories on the internet,” Nile objects.

“No. But that doesn’t mean you’re necessarily failing to expose yourselves. Nile, I know that your Pinterest is mostly kitten pictures, but _any_ social media is a very serious risk for you. You need to shut down the account.”

“Seriously?” 

“There is way too much overlap with the collection you had while you were in the Marines. It has to go.”

“I don’t even comment on the kittens.”

“It has to go.”

Nile folds her arms and mutters something that sounds like “monster” under her breath. Copley moves on to his next fight. 

“Joe, you cannot troll right wing political forums.” 

Joe glares. “Book helped.” 

Copley wants to beat his head against the table. “None of you can troll any forums.”

Nicky pats Joe on the shoulder, and smugly announces “I don’t get into political fights on the internet.”

“No,” Copley interrupts. “You get into fights about recipes. It seems that you’re driven to correct every recipe blogger who calls a food Italian.”

“Tomatoes are from the New World!”

“Let it go! Why do you even need recipe blogs anyway?”

“Copley, I don’t know what you think our lives have been like, but you can’t just kill a sheep and light a fire in this century. I’m out of practice on everything except the mac and cheese and canned tuna we keep in safe houses. I need ideas.”

“If I get you a subscription to the New York Times’ Cooking section, will you stop commenting on recipes?”

Nicky visibly sulks. “Okay.”

“Thank you.” Copley turns to his next target.

“Booker, you cannot do crosswords if you’re going to argue about the clues.”

“Why do they have a comment section if they don’t want to know if they’re wrong?”

“This is all too complicated, okay?” Copley tries to sound reasonable. “Why don’t I make it simple. No comments. Don’t write them, don’t even read them. Just...no comments.” He sees a dangerous light in Nile’s eye and adds, “or social media.”

There’s a general grumble of assent around the table, and Copley decides to call it good enough.

Andy leans towards Quynh. “See, I told you it was fine.”

“It is NOT!” Copley practically screams. “ALSO, no editing Wikipedia.”

“Oh come ON!” Andy protests. “If there is one thing I can do, even on vacation, it is diminish the burdens of ignorance!”

“People are not _burdened_ by their ignorance of Ancient Scythia!” Copley is yelling now, and he suspects he’s turning purple.

“How do you know that, Copley? How do you know that some lost, long-forgotten piece of _trivia_ isn’t the key that will knock sense into them? How?”

“You provided detailed notes on the significance of a headdress found with a mummified corpse!” 

“That kind of thing mattered a lot to me for many centuries!”

“You called Otzi the Iceman ‘a Bronze Age Donald Trump.’!”

“I took him down myself, and he had it coming!”

And that is when Quynh’s top falls off.

**Author's Note:**

> The story about Nicky and the novelist here is inspired by the juxtaposition of some pieces about a character named Nick in Hemingway's _In Our Time_ , particularly "Nick sat against a wall..." and "Big Two-Hearted River." The story about Booker and the novelist is about _Les Miserables_.


End file.
